Resistance is not futile.
- The Reveal of the Enterprise-E. Paramount wanted a new, better-looking ship for the movies. They sure as hell got one. Even better, she homages the original TOS-era Enterprise in her overall shape like her predecessors did, but she's far larger and sleeker. There's no question that, Starfleet's talk of "peaceful exploration" aside, this is a ship that's built for battle, and she proves more than up for the task.
- A moment for the Borg Cube can be heard over the intercom at the beginning of the battle: it takes them 3 seconds to break the first defensive line, and another 9 before Starfleet is routed and calling for reinforcements, a display of the Collective's power that surpasses that of Wolf 359.note
- Directly after the Borg give their "Resistance is Futile" speech, a Starfleet officer shows why the Federation may be beaten, but never broken:Admiral Hayes: "All units, open fire!"
- "I believe I speak for everyone here, sir, when I say: 'To hell with our orders.'"
- This exchange, leading to what is arguably the Enterprise-E's first CMoA.
Worf: Then perhaps today is a good day to die! Prepare for ramming speed!
Helmsman: Sir, there's another starship coming in ... it's the Enterprise!- Characteristically for Worf, he decides that with a ship broken beyond repair he is sure as hell going to do all the damage he possibly can. "Prepare for ramming speed!"
- Especially the way they do it. The Borg ship's attacks absolutely demolish pretty much every ship when they connect. The Enterprise-E's shields takes two of them with zero effect.
- And notice that, as they arrive, they announce their arrival by unleashing a barrage of photon torpedoes which destroys the turret firing on the Defiant, as if to say "Hands off the Defiant!"
- Despite not being an Admiral, Picard is able to take control of the fleet and every other ship follows his lead. As established in Star Trek: Voyager, when a fleet has no clear command structure, the captain of the most powerful ship gets to be in charge. And not only is the new Enterprise the most powerful ship around, it, like its direct predecessor is literally the Federation's fucking FLAGSHIP.
- During the first fight against the Borg, the Borg adapt to the Starfleet phasers rather quickly. Worf's "Captain, they've adapted!" would sound slightly fearful when said by a member of any other species. Worf? Hell no. He takes his rifle and starts clubbing the Borg drones with it. It should be noted that a (presumably) human Starfleet officer tries to follow Worf's lead, only for the drone to No-Sell his attempt. Worf's warrior training and Klingon muscles overcome Borg armor when Puny Earthlings can't.
- During the battle at the deflector dish the Borg again adapt to the phasers. This time, Worf slashes it apart with his beloved Klingon Mek'leth. When it manages to cut a hole in his suit, he patches it with the Borg's cables. Complete with trailing arm!
- Hell, just the fact that the Klingons managed to create a melee weapon that can harm the Borg.
- During the battle at the deflector dish the Borg again adapt to the phasers. This time, Worf slashes it apart with his beloved Klingon Mek'leth. When it manages to cut a hole in his suit, he patches it with the Borg's cables. Complete with trailing arm!
- Another Worf line, just two words: "Assimilate THIS!" See here
- Picard killing Borg with a Tommy Gun in the holodeck.
- The Borg Queen's temptation of Data is evil, kinky win. [blows on Data's new skin] "Was it good for you?" Yes. Yes it was.
- Picard is going blind with revenge against the Borg and calls Worf a coward for falling back and destroying the Enterprise. Worf stands up to him, face to face, and says with as much restraint that a Klingon can have, "If you were any other man, I would kill you where you stand!"
- Another for Picard and his effect on Worf — there are precisely three men in the universe that Worf would let insult him like that without violent retribution. One is his son Alexander. Another is Picard. (The other is Sisko, but sadly, his only scene in this movie was cut.)
- Lily calling Picard out on his decision to stay and fight the Borg.Lily: I am such an idiot. It's so simple: The Borg hurt you, and now you're gonna hurt them back.
Picard: In my century, we don't succumb to revenge. We have a more evolved sensibility.
Lily: BULLSHIT! I saw the look on your face when you shot those Borg on the holodeck. You were almost enjoying it!
Picard (indignant): How dare you?
Lily: Oh, come on, Captain. You're not the first man to get a thrill from murdering someone! I see it all the time!
Picard: Get out!
Lily: Or what? You'll kill me? Like you killed Ensign Lynch?
Picard: ... There was no way to save him.
Lily: You didn't even try! Where was your "evolved sensibility" then?
Picard: I don't have time for this.
Lily: Hey, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt your little quest! Captain Ahab has to go hunt his whale!
Picard: What?
Lily: You do have books in the 24th century?
Picard: This is not about revenge.
Lily: Liar!
Picard: This is about saving the future of humanity!
Lily: Jean-Luc, blow up the damn ship!
Picard: NO! Nooooooo!
(Picard angrily smashes the glass case with the Enterprise ship models)- Tim Lynch found Lily's retort "BULLSHIT!" to be an excellent summation against Picard's (temporary) pomposity about having "evolved sensibilities".When Picard tried to hide his desires behind his old platitude about how 24th-century humans have outgrown vengeance, I was cheering Lily's "bullshit!" cry in response.
- Tim Lynch found
- Picard's "line must be drawn here" speech afterwards.Picard: I will not sacrifice the Enterprise. We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They invade our space, and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds, and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!
- Lily tops him by quietly saying "You broke your little ships. See you around, Ahab."
- A quieter, but no less awesome moment of He Who Fights Monsters/My God, What Have I Done? realization follows:Picard: (softly, to himself) "And he piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race. If his chest had been a cannon he would have shot his heart upon it."
- Followed by a bit of Mood Whiplash when Lily doesn't know what he's quoting. She's never read Moby-Dick.
- Picard, when asked by Crusher if they'd make another Enterprise, smiles and says, "Plenty of letters left in the alphabet."
- Picard's No One Gets Left Behind speech to Lily, before going after Data.
- Data: "Resistance is futile." For full impact, you need to watch the whole scene. A lot of fans liken it to Spock's "Live long and prosper." from Star Trek (2009) as one of the most subtle non-explicit "Go fuck yourselves" in cinema.
- The whole duplicity that Data pulled off. He went from unconvincingly rationalizing his reaction to true pain after his escape attempt was thwarted, to so utterly fooling the Borg Queen that she didn't see his subterfuge until he was ready. Data has mastered lying.
- Data's escape attempt, even though it was ultimately thwarted. Despite being hamstrung with having his emotion chip forcibly reactivated, he still gained enough emotional control to remain inscrutable enough to leap into sudden action. He first times the initiation right as a restraint on his hand is being reapplied, breaking the restraint's actuator. After clobbering a drone while still partially restrained, he quickly figures out the controls for the rest of the restraints and makes a run for it. Even the forcefield that Queenie erected still wasn't enough to stop his resolve; only the slashing of his skin graft and the sudden sensation of organic pain stunned him enough to thwart his attempt.
- Special notice to the part when the the Phoenix launches (complete with its own Awesome Music) and flies away from the Earth with the Enterprise in pursuit, while at the same time Picard looks utterly screwed ... until suddenly Data reveals his hand and breaches the coolant tank.
- The Phoenix has another CMoA as it reaches orbit. At first it just looks like this rickety, cobbled-together thing that's barely a step up from a 60's space capsule... Then the side panels come off, and slowly a pair of Star Trek-style warp nacelles unfold and lock into position. And that is when the discerning Trekkie knows epic-ness is about to ensue.
- The reveal that Cochrane himself is the originator of the command "Engage" for warp drive. Geordi and Riker beam at each other like schoolboys when they hear it from the man who invented (the human version of) warp drive.
- Another for both Zefram Cochrane and Steppenwolf: Cochrane launches his modified nuclear missile to go to warp flight and get the attention of the Vulcans, leading to Earth's first contact with an alien race ... and he does it while blasting "Magic Carpet Ride" across the whole base.
- First Contact itself, especially as the aliens are revealed to be Vulcans. Because of course they were the Vulcans.
- A subtle one for Starfleet comes up just after the Enterprise rescues the Defiant survivors — it might not have been enough, but even before Picard and the Enterprise's intervention, Starfleet was doing much better than they did at Wolf 359 six years earlier (compare 'light damage' to 'heavy damage to outer hull, fluctuations in cube power grid detectable to Starfleet sensors', which considering the Borg's multiple-redundant systems, is saying something). Further, Starfleet was able to keep up a running battle all the way to Earth's solar system; there were a lot of ships still going by the time the Cube reached Earth — compare "The Best of Both Worlds", where there weren't any ships left after Wolf 359 except the Enterprise, which, as here, arrived late. The Borg aren't the only ones capable of adapting ...
- This works as an example for the Borg too. Even with far more preparation and advanced ships, Starfleet still doesn't even manage to slow the Borg down. They come within a hair's breadth of reaching Earth. Oh, and the destruction of the Cube? The Borg are prepared for the eventuality too. There's a reason everyone in the Star Trek universe fears the Borg.
- The Defiant is awesome. The Borg cube one-shots most ships with its attacks, two for the tougher ones. The Defiant gets the absolute snot beaten out of it, taking multiple hits, returns fire while having a gaping hole in its side, taken another which disables its weapons and shields, and then one more before the Enterprise saves it. It's still going when others of its kind are scrap. Then it was caught in the explosion of the Borg Cube which took out several ships and still remained salvageable. Sisko had built a tough little ship indeed.
- The leitmotif that plays when the Defiant and Worf are introduced? The Klingon theme, first heard in The Motion Picture when another looming menace was approaching Earth. And by this point in the franchise, that song had long since evolved to be a theme of imminent ass-kicking. What makes it even better is that the Klingons were originally the hated, yet respected enemies of Starfleet. When fans heard that music in the TOS era films, you expected the Klingons and the Federation to go at it tooth and nail. But in the TNG era? It brings smiles to the faces of a lot of Trek fans. Why? Because they're on our side now, and are among, if not the strongest allies the Federation has. You hear that song now, you know the Federation and the Klingons are about to pull off something magnificent against whoever the bad guys are eventually. And the Klingons will do it with Slasher Smiles on their faces, eager for a good fight.
- While not from the film itself, the previews on the First Contact VHS version had an amazing Paramount movie montage.
- The Borg Cube's first scene. A giant 3x3x3 kilometer cube of twisted mechanical monstrosity looming over the POV, accentuated by a very loud four-note bass brass instrument chord, signifying newcomers and reminding longtime fans that the Borg are terrifying. Followed by Starfleet's incoming fire slamming into it. The Borg are a nigh-unstoppable force, but Starfleet is not going to go quietly.
- Heck, the entire Battle of Sector 001 is one long Moment of Awesome beautifully married to Visual Effects of Awesome. And it all culminates when Picard orders every ship left to concentrate on the Borg's hidden weakspot, raining absolute barrages of phaser fire and photon torpedoes, capped off with the Enterprise-E's newest quantum versions delivering the finishing blow.Picard: Fire.
- It was very satisfying watching those starships unload their phaser banks and torpedo bays into the Borg cube.
